As of two weeks ago, I am the proud new owner of a Direct Stream Junior DAC (Redcloud on board). So far very pleased with my purchase, going through the CD collection and really enjoying the music.
Almost all my digital is standard red book CD at present… other than a couple of Chesky recordings that clearly state 24/96 on the cover. Case in point is Rebecca Pidgeon “Four Marys” disc… plays beautifully through DSJr but the screen insists it is receiving 44.1 / 16 bit stream.
I am pretty clueless with hi rez files so please bear with me… the DSJr is currently fed via Toslink from a Pioneer (stable platter style) CD player as transport.
So…
Will a ‘standard’ CD player such as above read a 24/96 file as such?
Will a Toslink connection allow the transmission of a 24/96 stream?
Should the DSJr automatically recognise and display the file format or is there a setting I need to change?
The optical toslink input on the Directstream accepts up 24/96. If I were to guess what the issue was, I’d say something is going on inside the Pioneer player. I would double check that it supports 24/96 output or that you need to change a setting so that it outputs at 24/96. What model Pioneer player is it? That might make it easier to help diagnose the issue.
You can write other things on CD ROM. Some transports (e.g. ones built for computers instead of audio) support other files which can be other sample rates.
Often you need to read the fine print on a CD: perhaps it was mastered with 24/96 and then converted to CD? (That’s usually how Chesky does recordings.)
TOSLink does support 24/96.
The DS and DS Jr display exactly what they get - they don’t look at any meta data, they just count samples per second and see how many lower bits in each sample differ from 0 to find the sample width. No settings.
If the Pioneer player is just a CD player that would explain the issue. It may very well be as Ted points out where some marketing terminology on the disc’s case may make you think the audio is something that it’s not. A vanilla CD player only supports 16/44.1 output and cannot decode, render or output higher than this. Though if the Pioneer player is a somewhat newer design it probably does support higher resolution audio formats burned to a disc. I don’t know of any commercial disc format that is 24/96 audio, though. Usually 24/96 is exclusive to downloads (or streaming services), which could then be burned to a disc and played back if your player supports it.
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